A rich trove of gardening lore and history.
Informative and generously illustrated volume detailing a British clan’s multigenerational contribution to horticulture.
Vividly describing changes in both gardening and the family’s fortunes, Shephard (Pickled, Potted, and Canned, 2001) begins her tale with young John Veitch, an apprentice gardener who left Scotland to work in a London nursery in 1768. He soon moved to Devon, where he designed and worked on the gardens at Killerton before establishing his own nursery near Exeter. Though the Veitch family stands at the heart of this account, the author also evokes their times. An expanding interest in landscape design and exotic plants, made possible by Victorian England’s burgeoning wealth, led to lavish expenditure on garden design as well as the purchase of such newly discovered and costly plants as fuchsias, orchids, and monkey puzzle trees. The Veitch family’s nurseries spanned three centuries, and as she describes their distinguished contributions to horticultural history, Shephard also celebrates the great plant hunters who worked for them. Men like the Lobb brothers and Ernest Wilson made discoveries under arduous conditions in China and South America that established the Veitches’ fortune, often at the cost of their own health and even lives. The author chronicles the family’s decision during the 1850s to move their headquarters to London’s Chelsea neighborhood, where they could take advantage of a larger market and provide rare, exotic, and expensive plants to the newly monied building country houses near London. The Veitches introduced the first orchid hybrids and numerous new species (many no longer grown), but they are less vivid than the plants they nurtured and their horticultural milieu, which spanned the sweeping parks of Capability Brown, the herbaceous borders of Gertrude Jekyll, and two world wars. Noting that the family destroyed many of its private papers, Shephard has to rely primarily on secondary sources to tell a story that ended in 1969, when Mildred Veitch sold the Exeter nursery.
A rich trove of gardening lore and history.Pub Date: June 1, 2003
ISBN: 1-58234-256-3
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Bloomsbury
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2003
BOOK REVIEW
This is not the Nutcracker sweet, as passed on by Tchaikovsky and Marius Petipa. No, this is the original Hoffmann tale of 1816, in which the froth of Christmas revelry occasionally parts to let the dark underside of childhood fantasies and fears peek through. The boundaries between dream and reality fade, just as Godfather Drosselmeier, the Nutcracker's creator, is seen as alternately sinister and jolly. And Italian artist Roberto Innocenti gives an errily realistic air to Marie's dreams, in richly detailed illustrations touched by a mysterious light. A beautiful version of this classic tale, which will captivate adults and children alike. (Nutcracker; $35.00; Oct. 28, 1996; 136 pp.; 0-15-100227-4)
Pub Date: Oct. 28, 1996
ISBN: 0-15-100227-4
Page Count: 136
Publisher: Harcourt
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 1996
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
An extravaganza in Bemelmans' inimitable vein, but written almost dead pan, with sly, amusing, sometimes biting undertones, breaking through. For Bemelmans was "the man who came to cocktails". And his hostess was Lady Mendl (Elsie de Wolfe), arbiter of American decorating taste over a generation. Lady Mendl was an incredible person,- self-made in proper American tradition on the one hand, for she had been haunted by the poverty of her childhood, and the years of struggle up from its ugliness,- until she became synonymous with the exotic, exquisite, worshipper at beauty's whrine. Bemelmans draws a portrait in extremes, through apt descriptions, through hilarious anecdote, through surprisingly sympathetic and understanding bits of appreciation. The scene shifts from Hollywood to the home she loved the best in Versailles. One meets in passing a vast roster of famous figures of the international and artistic set. And always one feels Bemelmans, slightly offstage, observing, recording, commenting, illustrated.
Pub Date: Feb. 23, 1955
ISBN: 0670717797
Page Count: -
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: Oct. 25, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 1955
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